


A History of Nightlife

by nerd_at_the_library



Series: A History of Nightlife [1]
Category: Night at the Museum (Movies)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Gen, Introspection, Making Friends, fear of the dark, the world is rather staggering after decades in a box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 20:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerd_at_the_library/pseuds/nerd_at_the_library
Summary: He awakens to darkness.This is my version of what might be going on in the head of Pharaoh Ahkmenrah before and during the first part ofNight at the Museum. Featuring Larry the nightguard, his son Nick, Ahkmenrah'scoffinbox, the magical tablet and various museum inhabitants.





	

 He awakens to darkness. It's pitch-black, the presence of it an almost physical feeling.

 Though he's used to the rough fabric covering his face, there's always been light of some kind. The complete absence of it freezes him to the core.

He tries to move his arms - and hits against something.

 No.

 No.

 Please, _no_.

 He forces himself against the invisible barrier, runs his hands over it. He can feel the wooden panels, the shapes he barely remembers, but remembers nonetheless.

_No_.

 His breath hitches. There is not enough air. He cannot _breathe_ -

He bangs his fists against the wood, screaming in anguish. There must be someone, please.

But nothing happens.

 He screams his mother's name, overcome by fear. Having spent centuries by their side, the absence of his parents hits him like one of the bricks the slaves built pyramids with.

 And a memory resurfaces: Something hitting his head, pain, darkness. The world, slowly fading away from him. The cold laughter of his brother.

 No, no, no. Never again, _please_.

 He sends prayers to the gods, voicelessly whispers the name of Ra, all the while trying to fight back the choke-hold of the darkness. Finally, he gives up, tears and mucus soaking through the bandages that cover his face.

 He never asked for this.

 In his lifetime, he was a king, a herald of the gods, son of kings and gods. Promised to lead the life of a ruler, with death as a mere break before afterlife.

 The weariness of millennia crashes down on him. Being alone for the first time in centuries, he realizes that the only truth is darkness. The darkness of the night sky. The darkness in his brother's eyes. The darkness that threatens to strangle him now.

 "Help me", he whispers, silent, weary. Broken.

 If the dark does not choke him, his own tears surely will.

 

* 

 Something has changed.

 The box - he refuses to ever think the _other_ _word_ \- has changed its position, and though it really is just a weak intuitious assumption, he can tell that it's moving. There is something oddly calming about that.

 He has always spent his days in the box half awake and half asleep, the imitation of life alongside his parents taking place only at night. So many years spent in stagnation - decades which became centuries and millennia.

 Life in the box has not been the same lately, though. He has been learning. During the haze of what must have been the day and the evening hours, people have often been around. Though he has not been able to communicate with them, he has picked up words, paired with the emotional connotations.

 One day, he has found himself able to understand them.

 He cannot tell how long he has been stuck in that box. Maybe he just spent a few days inside. Maybe it's been three weeks. Three centuries, maybe.

 For him, time has lost its meaning many centuries ago.

 He just lies there, letting his mind wander through memories and, how strange, the blurred emotions of people he has never known, but whose nearby presence he still senses.

He just lies there and, with a numb thrill, acknowledges the movement.

 

*

 The box does not move anymore.

 He does not fight anymore.

 His hands have given up to try and free him. He does not even think of screaming anymore, and his tears have long lost their sting.

 So he, engulfed in darkness and solitude, does the only thing left to him: He observes.

 There are others.

 He does not know who they are, but he senses them in a strange way, as if they are part of his body. He can also sense their emotions, ever-shifting and never-ceasing.

 The first thing - in what must have been his first night in some kind of new environment - his mind has touched was a deep-reaching fear, a creeping, terrifying dread, and all-consuming confusion.

 The second night, it was no different.

 The emotions are difficult to discern, mingling and shifting all the time. But the others, whoever they are, are not afraid anymore. He senses curiosity and activity.

 Sometimes he forgets that this activity has nothing to do with his own situation. He tries not to think about it too much. He is tired of his own tears.

 But one night, he cannot stand it anymore. He bangs his hands against the lid of the box, and he screams until his lungs hurt and his voice fades.

 He can sense fear.

 It is not his own, though. It is that of the others. They are afraid – of _him_.

 It means they have noticed him.

 Something inside him gives off sparks.

 He has never liked being feared. Not in his lifetime as king, and certainly not now. Knowing that he causes such terror in someone does something horrible to him. He wonders if this is how a god feels like – feared.

 He wonders if the gods are puzzled by knowing that they are feared, or if it makes them feel powerful. Does it horrify them the same way it horrifies him?

 But he has already stood a lot of horrors.

 And if to notice him means to fear him, he'll have to learn to live with that feeling of guilt.

 

*

 He uses their emotions to sense change.

 Most of the time he feels really bad about it, like he's exploiting those people he does not even know. Like he's using them to his own advantage, just to keep himself from going mad. But, he thinks to himself, they probably do not even notice him - at least when he's not screaming.

 Tonight, something changes.

 At first, he does not know what it is. It’s a shift that leaves none of the invisible others untouched, a giddiness. Upheaval. It stays there throughout the night, and it only grows weaker in what must be the morning. He passes over into the daytime haze.

 The next night, it’s exactly the same. The bustling emotions creep into his heart, make him feel more awake than he has felt in centuries. He wants to do something, and when he can’t hold back any longer, he starts to bang his fists against the lid. His anguish mingles with the sensation of clarity.

 This is what being _wide awake_ must feel like.

 

*

 The third night, he starts to scream. He screams in his native language and in English – the one he has learnt by observing and listening.

 And then, the world changes.

 There is a person. No – two of them.

 Unlike the others, those two do not feel like a part of him. He senses them like he would sense somebody who’s watching him.

 He’s screaming at the top of his lungs, smashing his knuckles against the wood. _Out. Let me out._

 And then, a crack. The wood disappears.

 He does not want to die, not _again_ –

 Light.

 Air.

 He inhales deeply, hands clanging to the edges of the now-open box. Beautiful light seeps through the bandages.

 He lifts a hand to his face. It shakes and trembles, but he clumsily manages to pull the claustrophobic fabric from his face, gasping for air.

 He is overwhelmed by perception.

 The dim light reveals a room, and in comparison to the box, it’s vast like the desert itself. His eyes settle on a jackal – the jackals! He remembers them. Guardians they were, guarding the place where he spent the centuries with his parents, brought to life by the power of the – the _tablet_.

 They look at him, and it feels incredibly familiar. Pain stings into his chest.

 They are not the only ones looking at him, though.

 He meets two pairs of eyes. One belongs to a middle-aged man. The grim line of his eyebrows does not hide his confusion. The shadows of an already passing fear cling to his face. Besides him stands a boy, looking up at him in terror and amazement.

 He moves, and both immediately take a step back. Shame and guilt creep into his heart. He can’t think of anything appropriate to say, so he blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind. “You would not believe how stuffy it is in there.”

 The man’s fear ultimately makes place for confusion. “How come you speak English?” Apparently, he is just as baffled as himself.

 “I went to –“ his mind thankfully substitutes the name – “Cambridge University.” Because that’s how the other place was called in the conversations he sometimes listened to.

 The man’s confusion is almost hilarious. “You went to _Cambridge?_ ”

 “I was on display in the Egyptology Department.” He feels another shift, and this time, it’s coming from himself, not from some invisible others. He clears his throat. “I am Ahkmenrah, fourth king of the fourth king… ruler of the lands of my fathers”

 The boy’s eyes widen – no longer with fear, he realizes with relief.

 The man’s shoulders relax. “I am Larry, son of Milton… and this is my son, Nick. And we hail from Brooklyn.” Something in his expression changes. “Well, I do. I mean, he comes out and stays with me on Wednesdays. And every other weekend. That was the custody agreement that we had.”

 Though Ahkmenrah has no idea what that man, Larry, is talking about, it fills him with a childish joy to see that their fear of him has diminished. He slightly bows his head. “Larry, Nick, guardians of Brooklyn.” He clears his throat again. After all this time his voice feels strange to him, _sounds_ strange to him. “I am forever in your debt. Now bestow the tablet on me… so that I may assume command of my kingdom.”

 Larry’s expression shifts again – something in his eyes tells Ahkmenrah that the man would rather be anywhere else right now. “Oh, yes. Okay, the tablet. I would… love to bestow it upon you, but we don’t actually… have it.”

 His stomach flips. “What happened to it?”

 “It was stolen. We –“

 “We were about to get it back”, the boy – Nick – says. “But these two” – he points at the jackals – “do not want us to leave.”

 Ahkmenrah turns toward the guards and whispers the words that will make them step back from the entrance. They immediately follow his order, both flanking the doorway, tightly gripping their spears.

 Larry and Nick gape at him. Uncomfortably self-conscious, he returns their stares.

 “Can you… maybe… help us?”, Larry asks.

 “Please?”, Nick adds.

 Ahkmenrah nods. “And, again, thank you, guys. Thank you so much.”

 

*

 He thinks that the world outside the box will never cease to be overwhelming.

 There is air, there is light, there is life. And judging from the view behind the windows, he has not even _really_ been outside. There’s yet another world, a world dressed in white, decorated with foreign buildings and trees.

 Larry tells him that this place is called a museum – a word he has picked up in Cambridge before.

He has never thought that the tablet could bring anyone outside his family to life, but it does. There are people he does not know, and they are many. There are animals, some of which he has seen before and others he hasn’t, and paintings with moving and talking inhabitants.

 There is a horde of men, and apparently they are searching for Larry, because the man who must be their leader points at him and screams something – a command which sends them running towards Ahkmenrah, Larry and Nick. Their movements and faces speak of trouble.

 “What is that?”, Ahkmenrah hears himself ask, with that voice that still feels strange to him.

 “Huns”, Larry responds. “The one in front of the others is Attila. We should get away from them _now_.”

 Ahkmenrah comes to a halt in front of him. “Wait.” And with an all-consuming certainty, he knows that he will be able to communicate. He will have to find out more about this, about the effects of the connection the magic of the tablet creates between him and all those others. “Pardon me, Larry. I speak Hun.” This may not be exactly the case, but all of a sudden, he feels certain of himself. Safe.

 Larry shoots him a suspicious glare and takes a step back, almost as if he wants to hide behind Ahkmenrah. But he stays.

 And then the Huns arrive. Ahkmenrah straightens his back, moving so that Larry is clearly behind him. The man called Attila storms up to him, and he screams words in a foreign language. They resound in Ahkmenrah’s mind, their meanings translated and put in place.

 He glances at Larry behind him. “He says that he wants to rip you apart.”

 Weariness clouds Larry’s face, drags his shoulders down. He leaves his hideout behind Ahkmenrah, standing next to him. “All right. Again with the ripping. Listen, I understand.”

 Now Ahkmenrah is the baffled one. But being baffled all the time, it does not really make much of a difference.

 “I get it”, Larry continues. “Ripping for you… You want to rip things, okay? And I think maybe that’s because somebody ripped you a long time ago. In here.” He points at Attila’s chest. “Somebody ripped little… baby Attila a long time ago, right here.”

 Ahkmenrah realizes the shift. It does not take place in his mind, but in Attila’s face.

 “They ripped something out, didn’t they?” Larry’s voice has become silent and soft. Suddenly Ahkmenrah is reminded of his parents, calming him in the mornings, before dawn. “A little baby all alone in a tent… whose daddy went off… to pillage some town… or go and plunder somewhere, just doing his job. But who was left alone? You –“

 Attila hugs Larry. Sobbing, he hugs him so tight that Ahkmenrah fears for Larry’s bones. In two seconds, Larry’s expression changes from horror to shock to surprise and, finally, something like contentment. Then, he points his finger at a grim, frowning Hun behind Attila. “You’re next.”

 

*

 Ahkmenrah is far too distracted to keep track of everything that follows. He is distracted by the air, by the light, by the voices. He realizes that Larry talks to two tiny men, one of them wearing a funny hat. He notices a creature made of bones, and a man made of what looks like bronze. He talks to a man on a horse. The man introduces himself as Theodore Roosevelt – “Just call me Teddy” – and tells him about all of the living exhibits, but Ahkmenrah trails off again and again.

 It is almost too much, but just _almost_.

 And then they go outside.

 It is cold and everything is covered in white, a city beneath a deep blue sky. He crouches and runs his fingers through the white stuff, and despite the cold sting, it is incredible. The white turns to water that runs over his hands.

 “You’ve never seen snow before?”, Nick asks him.

 “He’s from Egypt, Nicholas”, Teddy say and turns to Ahkmenrah. “Wait until you see fresh snow falling from the sky. It looks stunning.”

 Led by a woman called Sacagawea, they follow different trails until they reach a place called Central Park.

 Everything that follows is simply too much. He is overwhelmed by the cool wind, by the glistening buildings, by the trees with branches that stretch into the night sky like bony fingers. But the thing that distracts him the most are the people, their activity, the life that sparks from them.

He realizes that he and Nick are sitting on the back of the bone creature, and they pursue a man, and eventually they make it. His concentration only returns to him when somebody hands him something.

 The tablet.

 He presses it tightly to his chest, and for a moment, he feels like there’s nothing but him and the tablet. That’s it. It was all a hallucination, and now he wakes up, and the world will turn to darkness again, and he’ll still be inside the box –

 Something touches his big toe, ripping him from his thoughts.

 His gaze focuses on the two little guys Larry spoke to earlier.

 “Hey!”, the one with the funny hat calls out. “You’re alright? You look like you’re about to pass out!”

 “And we would not be able to catch you or something like that”, the other one says. He’s clad in red fabric and silver and golden armor.

 “I – no, I’m not going to pass out. I’m just tired”, Ahkmenrah says. “I have to get used to”, he points at their surroundings, “all of that.” He crouches down to be closer to them. “Thank you for helping Larry regaining my tablet.”

 The one with the hat avoids his eyes, seemingly embarrassed. “Ain’t no big thing, amigo. After all, we’d only be dead plastic at night without it. And –“

 “And we would gladly do it again”, the one with the armor says. He bows his head. “I am Octavius, leader of the Romans.”

 “And I am Jedediah, explorer of the West”, the other one says.

 

*

 “I do not want to go back in there.” But he knows he has to.

 “I understand”, Larry says.

 They are standing in the Egyptian department, facing the box. Ahkmenrah will continue to call it that. The word _coffin_ repulses him.

 He extends a hand, touching the inside of the open lid. The familiarity of the wooden panels does not manage to calm him down. His hand clenches into a fist, knuckles pressed against the wood.

 “Don’t go”, he whispers. If things will go how Larry has predicted, if they will fire him, then the newfound freedom will be history.

 He does not want to spend any more time in the box. He does not want to experience the claustrophobia, the lack of air, the pain.

 “I could switch the tablet off, if you want to”, Larry says.

 Ahkmenrah knows the weight of what he’s proposing. He has thought of that possibility earlier this morning, and it’s eating him from the inside. If Larry disables the flow of magic, the power of the tablet will become dormant. So will the exhibits. They would be nothing but plastic, wax and metal just because of him, just because he does not want to experience this confinement.

 He thinks of Teddy and Octavius and Jed, and he makes a decision.

 “No”, he says. “Leave it the way it is. Let it bring them alive. Let them unleash chaos over whosoever follows after you.” He takes off his crown. Then he reaches into the box, grabbing the bandages.

 “But what about you?”, he hears Larry ask.

 Ahkmenrah squeezes his eyes shut. He is tired of his own tears. Then he turns around to face the other. “I will do as I always did. I will _observe_ ”, he says quietly, but the knowledge of his heritage strengthens his spine. “And I will know what is going on.” He raises the bandages. “Help me with those?”

 With Larry’s help, he is turned back into the faceless mummy. But this time, he leaves eyes, ears, nose and mouth free of fabric. When they are finished, Larry asks him to wait. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

 When he returns, he hides one hand behind his back. “I have a gift for you.” He extends the hand towards Ahkmenrah.

 He takes the small object from it, examining it suspiciously. “What is that?”

 Larry takes it and presses his thumb against one end. Light flashes out of the other end. “It’s called a flashlight”, he says.

 Something sparks through Ahkmenrah’s subconscious mind. “Thank you”, he says, feeling like a child.

 Larry hands him another object – a small box with cylindrical pieces of metal in it. “Those are called batteries”, he says. Then he explains how to put them inside the flashlight. They place the flashlight and the box inside the other box, the large one, the… _coffin_ , hiding them below some of the cushioning material near to where his hands are supposed to be.

 “I will”, Larry says, “not put the extra lock back to the lid. I will leave it the way it is. This means you can get out if you really want to.”

 Ahkmenrah straightens his back, furrowing his eyebrows. “Thank you”, he says, sounding harsher than intended. “For everything.”

 He takes a deep breath and steps into the box.

 The darkness is the last thing he sees. He greets it like an old friend.

 Then, he passes over into the daytime haze.

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I'll post another part of the story that's set before and during _Battle of the Smithsonian _. Let me know if you'd be curious about reading it :)__


End file.
